Monday, April 7, 2014

THEME: 2 — lots of two-related stuff, plus a 2-ish image in the center of the grid (made out of black squares)

Theme answers:

16A: High-stakes wager (DOUBLE OR NOTHING)

59A: Boeing 767, for one (TWIN-ENGINE PLANE)

13D: More, at a meal (SECOND HELPING)

14D: Someone who's so nice you almost want to smack him (GOODY TWO SHOES) (this clue is insane; excessive niceness is Not what's behind this term. No reasonable person wants to "smack" another person simply for being nice. The clue misses the essential smugness / unctuousness required to invite smacking)

28A: See 68-Across

68A: One of a couple for the Roman god JANUS (FACE)

45A: One of a couple in a 767 (AISLE)

Word of the Day: JANUS (28A: See 68-Across) (68A: One of a couple for the Roman god 28-Across => FACE) —

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (Latin: Ianus, pronounced [ˈiaː.nus]) is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, passages, endings and time. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. The Romans named the month of January (Ianuarius) in his honor. (wikipedia)

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Sometimes you have a tight, well-conceived, expertly executed theme, and sometimes you have a general idea and you just throw everything but the kitchen sink at it. Today, the latter. Not sure what the occasion for all the 2-ness is (it would be nice if it had a clear context, point of reference … something). But the theme answers seem really arbitrary. The JANUS cross-referenced stuff is oddly placed, esp. considering the other 4s in the corners are all specifically doubles. Which of these four is not like the others: PAIR, DYAD, DUAL, FACE? FACE! You are correct! GOODY TWO SHOES has nothing to do with doubleness at all. Yes, there are two shoes, but absolutely nothing about that expression relates to doubleness. AISLE? There are a gajillion things that come in pairs, and … AISLE? I see that it's connected to TWIN-ENGINE PLANE, but … why? Nothing's connected to DOUBLE OR NOTHING, so … I'm not getting the structural logic here. That said, I liked that the grid was unusual looking—don't really care about the "2" in the middle, unusualness is always good on a Monday. And some of the fill was quite nice. Conceptually, it's all just too loose for me. But it's not bad, by any means.

There were exactly three places during the solve where I either faltered or had to think a little bit. First, right away, at 1-Across. Wanted DYAD for [Couple]. A reasonable answer, it turns out. Then at 39D: Split with an ax I had the "C" and wrote in CHOP UP instead of the correct CLEAVE. Lastly, I didn't quite grasp what [One of a couple in a 767] was going for, so had to fall back on the crosses until it became clear. Otherwise, I was pretty much filling in answers as fast as I could read the clues.

72
comments:

Themes have become pretty much beside the point for me on Mondays. It's rare that I ever notice them until I'm done solving and go back and see what the theme was. So the somewhat random nature of this one had no effect on me whatsoever. I just appreciated that it provided a few really good entries, like DOUBLE OR NOTHING and GOODY TWO SHOES.

Fill was nicely clean, and there were some nice answers outside the theme, like SWOONED, ANARCHY and TUSSLE. Got tripped up by having ALeF instead of ALIF, which gave me a new species of bird, the eBIS. Other than that, this was typically Monday-quick and -easy.

Medium for me mostly because I went through kilo and meGA before GIGA. The rest went quickly for a Mon., although I had to fill in 28a before I could finish as I have yet to commit to memory Arabic letters (really, on a Mon.?).

CLEAVE is a JANUS word, a word that is its own antonym. Just a bonus? I don't see any others. Lots of long answers for an early-week puzzle, plus a couple of late-week answers, ALIF and ANOUKE. good fun: two thumbs up here.

I found the puzzle medium. Disjointed would be how I describe it. The doubles in the corners except face and the random long theme entries with no connection distracted me from enjoying it. Agree with @Jae about ALIF, and I'll add AQABA and RUNIC. JANUS also seems suspect for a Monday, I don't think I've ever heard of this particular Roman God. The fill was good but the theme randomness just kept nagging at me. I thought maybe I had missed something and would come here to be enlightened. Guess not.

I'm getting too fussy -- bothered me to have three long theme answers starting with a two-word, with two in the middle of the fourth instead. But really, I enjoyed it -- liked the picture, liked all the theme words, liked AQABA, liked getting it over with quickly.

Really don't like hearing there was a Patrick Berry Sunday, when my hotel for some reason delivered the Washington Post instead of the Times. I'll be glad to get back home!

I thought the review was like having double fudge cookies and complaining that they aren't oreos.

A giant 2 to clue everyone in to what is going on, two words in each corner (yes JANUS' two FACEs count as a "two" word),two great 15s and two great 13s on a Monday, and a bonus TOO at 21A. What's not to love? {Horshack voice}Maybe it should have run on Ground Hog Day{/Horshack voice}?

Not an overly complicated theme, perfect for a Monday. The twin concept is cute, and it opens the floodgates to a plethora of 2-related references. It's like the Bible code: if you look hard enough, you'll find them.

The visual "2" divides the grid into 2 hemispheres in the middle, and ANNO + TUSSLE contain 2 of the same consonants in their middle. Then there are 2 ha's in HAHA, 2 R's in ERR, 2 E's in ESE and 2 O's in SNOOZE, SOO and SWOONED. We have 2 shoulders to SHRUG with, 2 glutei (BUNS) every time we used a chair and SAT, and the males of all mammals have 2 62-downs. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, you need at least 2 LEGOs to build anything, and one palmate-antlered beast is a "moose" but 2 of them are MEESE. And the pièce de résistance: the entire grid is 2 dimensional.

But seriously folks, this is a terrific NYT debut by Douglas Taillon, exemplary fill quality with nary a groaner in it, ROBT, INA, ESE and EDO notwithstanding. I hope we'll see more of his work.

Outside the duality of the theme, I enjoyed the JANUS / GENUS / ONUS trio, ANARCHY, ALIF, AQABA, OPAQUE, RUNIC, and it was fun to see ANOUK Aimée after a long absence.

I suppose you could throw in a couple of hot dog BUNS and a CLEAVE is what I wrote in the margin.

Lots and lots of theme makes this Monday twice as interesting as some even if it does seem a bit disjointed. LOL @Rex: PAIR, DUAL, DYAD ... FACE! Actually I would have like the phrase TWOFACED over JANUS/FACE.

Congratulations on your debut, Douglas Taillon, it is a big deal! Go celebrate with a double-dipped cone!

Don't know how, but I scratched at YeP/CLEeVE. Errant key stroke? 17:46 includes time to hunt down the error. (George Cleeve was Portland ME's founder)

This Monday was plenty easy, but there were some toughish get-by-cross-only clues so I'd call it medium challenging for a Monday. Tokyo=EDO, ALIF, SOO canal are rarely-used proper names/foreign words & needed all crosses. Needing substantial crosses: JANUS FACE YENTA AISLE TROUPE. Even DRS had ambiguity as I considered MDS and DOS for a bit. Also, AWRY=wonky? OK. But not on a Monday.

Despite the apparent dislike for them, I would have found this eminently satisfying if the constructor could have squeezed an X in there to make it a panagram. Very nice, tight puzzle with almost zero garbage. Sometimes I do puzzles like this, and then read the writeups and comments and think people are just complaining for the sake of complaining. A great, easy start to the week :)

But I agree with @Casco Kid, Wonky = AWRY was totally new to me. I was amused, just before composing this post, to look up WONKY in one of the online dictionaries. Note this definition and example sentences:

WONKY

British : unsteady, shaky

chiefly British : awry, wrong

Examples of WONKY

He is a wonky bureaucrat in the State Department.

She enjoys reading about tax law and other wonky stuff.

He has a wonky knee.

But, hey! The first two of these obviously refer to the meaning of WONKY as pertaining to a person who is deeply involved in the details of policy, etc., and is at least mildly pejorative. Nothing to do with being AWRY except in the vaguest sense.

So the puzzle is correct, though obscure, while (Oh, horrors! Could it be?) the online dictionary misses the mark.

Solid, easy-medium Monday. Like @Steve J, I barely noticed the theme. On reeexamination I quite like it. Two-related clue/answer pairs in all four corners. Cute, though if all four had the duality in the answer it would have been neater. FACE IMO seems out of place.

Agree GOODY TWO SHOES isn't well clued.

Had gOwn for 23A at first, ALeF for 58D. Both easily fixed via crosses.

I thought this was an unusually fine Monday. Nice theme answers, with their layout also theme-related in a two A and two D pattern. PADRE and STUD could be another PAIR. Also liked RUSTIC-RUNIC and AT NO crossing a clue about "elements."

@John Child - Thanks for the reminder about the DOUBLE meaning of CLEAVE.

@Douglas Taillon - nice to read here that this was your debut. I look forward to more.

I, too, thought that GOODY TWO SHOES was oddly clued, but I don't object as much as others. GTSs ARE nice, too (two?) nice, treacly nice, so nice you want to smack them. They are also santimonious pr***s but I think the clue worked.

I liked the puzzle a lot, especially since I actually caught the 'two' references that littered the grid. I love the JANUS clue. Missed the 2 in the center, but still. Nice debut.

p.s.Pretty unusual, that the four longest themers crisscross one another. You'd kinda think that might be almost impossible to pull off. Had a patio project like that, once... Had to make a branch path come round a bend and connect up with the main spread, when layin patio brick. Happened to come out perfect, even matchin the alternatin brick pattern. Onlooker's comment: "U live in a tree, dude".But eye dye grass.

Loved all the duets in this puzzle, the two long across themers and the two long down themers, like II and = ! I think @AliasZ found everything, and more. Nice trainer puzzle to cut one's teeth on. EDO makes a fine chew toy, for example, @Casco Kid. Store it in the file next to obi. Off to work, about which I have two conflicting URGEs...

Yup, as soon as I see that Z and Q on a Monday, I start looking for that pangram...but not today.

Like many, I was flying through the clues to fast to notice the theme until afterwards, and liked all the sprinkling of 2 references. I leaned of JANUS in HS Latin class. Loved the ANARCHY entry and the SWOONED/SNOOZE cross.

I think I almost have the AQABA entry cemented in my brain, but I may still need to a couple more puzzles to confirm.

Lots of Brits in my small town (next to the GM Proving grounds, I think that's why?) so I have become well versed in words like "wonky", used in the AWRY sense.

I had a writeover--"Alef" for ALIF. Have to commit that one to memory.No problem with wonky for AWRY--but my wife is English and I watch tons of British TV. Didn't even think that it might be a problem for others.Now I have the Adam Ant earworm: "Two shoes two shoes goody goody two shoes.Don't drink don't smoke.What do you do?"

The more I think about it the more I appreciate what I called "disjointed" in my past post. The theme is dense and shows up unexpectedly all over the place including in the clues. Keeps you on your two toes! The more I look at it the more I like it!

I learned today that speed solvers need skills beyond general knowledge and crossword experience. Wife is away so I tried solving online. Lost maybe 15 to 45 seconds because I had RUNes for RUNIC - but crosses corrected that - the rest of the puzzle filled pretty much on sight. However I took over 11 minutes! 3 to 4 times more than the faster group.

On "Jeopardy" a quick thumb is as important as a ton of trivia knowledge - I guess typing skills (I can type like a bandit, btw) and a different pattern of solving must needs be a part of the tool kit for the speed freaks.

I now think my theory as to why speed solvers tend to dislike "stacks" holds a ton of water. Triple and Quad stacks require a different type of thinking (parsing another's wit) that is not at all conducive to speed.

Anyhow, I've now set myself a nice low bar, next time my wife is out of town I'll try this again.

@Buck. I think we can blame Shortz for that. The constructor usually doesn't know when a puzzle will be published, but the editor sure does. Could have been easily fixed, too. 28 D could have been clued as Derek Jeter's has a #2 on it.

@JFC I don't know if you meant it to be so, but your comment was one of the most humorous I've seen in a long time.

@mohair-- I'm a speed solver, but like many others, I appreciate a difficult puzzle that requires me to think. I'm not into puzzles just to prove my reflexes. I think you'll find that speed-solvers' times on stacked puzzles are just as fast, relatively, as they are on other puzzles. They take everybody longer.The reason @Rex and many others don't like stacked puzzles is because of the (necessary) compromises in fill quality in order to achieve the stacks. I don't mind as long as the entries make consistent sense with the clues. But I think that most solvers want fresh, fun phrases and words, and you can only get a limited amount of those into a puzzle with as many fill constraints as a double quad stack puzzle.

The south east corner -- UGH! I zipped through this puzzle feeling very self satisfied until the Arab port and Viking language and Janus Pair (all I could conger was a cover of a mystery book with two guns) stumped me. SO FRUSTRATING!

But otherwise, liked the puzzle. Am a plane nut, so enjoyed all the Boeing arcana.

What a fun puzzle! I thought it was perfect for a Monday. Not too complicated and loads of fun. Kudos to Douglas Taillon!

How nice that the pair of 13 down theme answers intersected with the pair of 15 across theme answers. @Norm C, I liked the idea that this could be seen as a Roman numeral two. I didn't see the two figure in the grid until I was halfway finished solving.

I wondered whether it would be ALIF or ALef (I've seen both) but IBIS fixed that. I read a book called "Alif the Unseen" not too long ago so you'd think I would have immediately thought of that spelling. But no such luck.

I thought JANUS was fine for Monday. I'm pretty sure the month of January was named for him (looking in both directions).

@M&A, I have not done any of your puzzles for a while but I'm going to try to tackle your "stack" puzzle today.

Did your puzzle posted above. Liked the clues for 11 across, 5 down, and 12 down. LOVED the clue for 7 down, made me chuckle.Like @BobK I thought this was your easiest and smoothest puz yet (took me less than 45 seconds). Be careful or you're gonna turn into a normal constructor soon!

@benko - Thanks for the input, point well-taken on stacks. Although Rex complained about the most recent M.A.S. stacks and the fill seemed no worse than any other puzzle.

Anyhow - There must be some solving mechanism I don't understand - I'm a good and accurate typist and this morning's puzzle was easy as they get (mostly I keyed in answers as soon as I read the clue), and yet it took me 11 minutes. I'll try again next week, maybe I just lack experience.

@mohair- Experience is certainly part of it. I'm a fast typist, but inaccurate--I'm always going back to correct myself. people who learned to read music seem to have an advantage as far as what @retired chemist is talking about, being able to type/write and read at the same time. I started my music studies at age six and it seems to help having that skill as second nature. I just want to correct the often common misconception that speed solvers are some kind of unfeeling robots who just spit out answer after answer without thinking. (Well, sometimes on a dumb Monday...) This is certainly not my experience nor that of other (better) speed solvers I have talked to. If anything, the best solvers seem to think about puzzles quite a lot of the time.

@Benko and retired chemist. Thanks again for the input. I know that when I think the answer I type it, but I do not look ahead - must be a learned skill. Studied piano long enough to know that eventually the chords came without thought - guess I've got to learn the same with speed solving. The ten thousand hour theory. Or Maybe my wife and I should stay on the pen and ink slow boat!

Perhaps one of the best Monday puzzles ever. I'm not used to playful creativity on a Monday, yet these clues were unexpectedly fun. Well done and challenging for a Monday. It took me a full 6 minutes. Great job Douglas Taillon and Will Shortz.

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation and my 10/15/2012 post for an explanation of a tweak I've made to my method. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)

Easy but lots of fun to write such long answers on a Monday. Felt clean and contemporary to me, which, considering the '70s and '80s dreck posing as pop culture that is too often served up at the NYT xword, is a win, imho.

Am I the only one who found that about 40% of the fill was insultingly easy? Mere synonyms, definitions, or the most obvious "fill in the blanks imaginable".? I felt like I was doing a puzzle for a fourth grader and it made me feel cheap.

Well well, we have a SECONDHELPING of yesterday's theme. Never noticed the "2" formation of center black squares till coming here. That elevates this debut (!) to a higher PLANE.

When DudleyDoright wouldn't fit at 14d, I had my first gimme themer. And just how would you define Mr. SHOES--in a clue-sized sentence? The one given is as good as any.

Never flew on a 767; was surprised that it has 2 AISLEs--and also that it has only 2 ENGINEs. They must be monsters.

Theme density and grid choppiness make for fill dreckity; no surprise there. I still wince every time I have to write EKE, that one-clue-and-one-clue-only piece of hackneydom. Still, this is better than most Mondays--and WAY better than most debuts. WTG Doug!

A good Monday. The only possibly obscure name, MEESE, had to be a given for anyone who lived in the San Diego area at the time. The local papers positively swooned over a "local" being elevated to such a high position. But, I also seem to recall there was some sort of trouble about his tenure. At any rate, the name sticks.

Loved GOODYTWOSHOES. Haven't heard it in years, but it was a common put-down by my Mother. WONKY was also a favorite of hers, maybe came from being raised in Canada by English parents?

I believe that they only made 737s in a narrow body style. We fly them all the time in Alaska and I have never seen one with two aisles. They are typically partitioned of with cargo in front and passengers in the back but still only one aisle.Tony VitaAnchorage, AK